


With Fire In His Eyes

by YetButYoungInDeed



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, ft zuko trying to give advice with moderate success
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 11:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15556983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YetButYoungInDeed/pseuds/YetButYoungInDeed
Summary: He sits shaking on his bed, holding the candle in his hands, and watches though one eye as the flame flickers. He rests his hand over it, and slowly, as time goes on, he stops smelling burning flesh.Zuko is no longer afraid of fire. The Avatar, however, is.





	With Fire In His Eyes

He is no longer afraid of fire.

He cannot afford to be – fire is in blood that runs through his body, in the heart that makes it flow. Fire is in the land in which he was born, ash floating through the air with which he breathes. Fire is in his _name –_ Zuko, prince of.

(He goes to sleep with a candle beside his bed, and wakes to find it lit.)

In the days after his banishment, he is rarely lucid. He is lost in a half-awake state of burning. His father stands above him, impossibly tall, and somehow through all the fire that eats away at the skin of his cheek and the blood that muddies his vision, he can always see the man’s figure - a dark mountain on a horizon of red.

In his first moments of collectiveness, Zuko sees the candle on his bedside and screams.

(Uncle is quick to take it away, and Zuko feels a humiliation in him that has never really left stir anew.)

But Zuko learns. He has to – he sits shaking on his bed holding the candle in his hands, and watches though one eye as the flame flickers. He rests his hand over it, and slowly, as time goes on, he stops smelling burning flesh.

(There are days, still, when he cannot see flames without retching. He stumbles backwards and sparks fly unbidden from his hands. He gasps for air, but all he can taste is smoke, spiralling down his windpipe and choking him. He tries to curl in on himself, but he is ablaze, fire conjuring itself from his body. In the illuminated corners of his chambers he kneels over and gags. His bile comes out hot.)

Zuko begins to bend again. His eye begins to heal. The skin there is dark and rough as stone, and the eye doesn’t see quite right and can’t open fully, but at least he can wake without blood on his pillow.

(It still hurts, some days. Sometimes he gets migraines and the whole left side of his head churns like the sea beneath his ship in the midst of a storm. He doesn’t ask if it will ever get better – he already knows the answer.)

After three years, he is scarred in more ways than one. But he is no longer afraid of fire.

The Avatar, however, is.

One morning, as they spar together, Aang is in a bad mood. Zuko doesn’t know why particularly, nor does he ask, but his anger is obvious.  As they fight, Aang becomes more frustrated. His punches and kicks hold too much force, too much tension, and his fire is explodes messily around them.

Aang shouts, kicks, and fire surges past Zuko, scalding his forearm.

“Ah-“ he curses under his breath, shakes his arm out, and regains his stance. But Aang has stopped dead.

“What?”

The Avatar is wide-eyed. “I- I hurt you.”

Zuko shrugs. “We’re sparring. Happens all the time.”

“But I lost control. I _hurt_ you!” Aang throws his arms up, and Zuko raises an eyebrow.

“It’s not even a burn. Don’t be dramatic.”

“You don’t get it!” Aang shouts. He stalks across the room angrily, and he’s right – Zuko _doesn’t_ get it.

“It’s a tiny scald-“

“ _I don’t want to hurt people!”_

Aang whirls around and stares him down. Heavy breathing tugs his small frame up and down in jerky motions, and Zuko is reminded that this is a _child_ in front of him.

(He and Azula are in the palace gardens. She holds a butterfly by its wing and waves it in front of his face. “Come on, Zuko!”

“I don’t want to hurt it.”

The butterfly flaps its free wing feebly, and tears prick at the edge of Zuko’s vision as Azula rolls her eyes and sets the little thing ablaze.)

“I hate this. I hate fire,” Aang says. “Water can heal and Earth can build but Fire just _burns.”_ His voice becomes small, and he looks away. “I don’t want to be a firebender.”

“But you are,” says Zuko. “You can’t hate fire, Aang. It’s part of you.” Aang is quiet, and Zuko sighs, stepping towards him.

“Look. Fire – fire is hard. It’s hard because the other elements, if you lose control, they stop. Fire continues to burn. But there’s more to it than that. Fire is – fire is life. That’s what the Sun Warriors said, right?”

Zuko really wishes he’d inherited his Uncle’s silver tongue.

“If fire is life,” Aang mumbles, “then why is it so good at taking it?”

Zuko sucks in a breath. He doesn’t know what to say to that.

So he doesn’t. Aang walks out of the training area, and Zuko lets him.

***

“Aang,” he whispers, shaking the Avatar’s shoulder. “Aang, wake up.”

“Wha-“ he opens an eye groggily, sees Zuko, and closes it again. “S’not sunrise yet. Lemme sleep.”

“No. Get up.”

Zuko doesn’t know _why_ he’s decided early morning is the best time to have this conversation with Aang, but it’s been keeping him up all night, and he has to get it out of the way before he overthinks it. Or, overthinks it more.

Aang does finally get up – albeit grumpily – and follows him.

They wander a little while to a lesser used room of the temple. Zuko takes a deep breath, channels his inner Uncle Iroh, and sits down next to where he found a flower growing in between the cracks of the pale stone floor. Aang, rubbing his eye blearily, does not sit so much as collapse beside him.

“What would happen if I over-watered this?” Zuko asks, gesturing to the flower. Aang blinks at him.

“Uhhh…it’d die?”

“Right,” he nods. Off to a good start.  “And what about if I buried it?”

“You’d crush it. It would die.”

“Right. What would happen if it got blown over?”

“It would die.”

“And what would happen if I set it on fire?”

Aang gives him a deadpan stare. “It would burn. And die.”

“Right.” Zuko says. “All the elements have the capacity to kill it. But, all of them also help it live. It needs the soil, the sun, water and air. Without any of these, the flower dies.”

“Okay. Cool.” Aang yawns, loudly. “ Can I go back to sleep now?”

Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to find some patience deep within himself. “People are the same. We are a product of all the elements combined. And, just like the flower, we can be hurt by any of them. No element’s influence is solely good, and neither evil.”

“I know that.”

“Then why are you so scared of fire?”

Aang bites his lip and stares at the flower.  His hands hover uncertainly around it, as if it would wilt on touch. “I.... I’ve told you, I don’t want to hurt anyone. And fire is…really good at that.” He looks up at Zuko. “You get that, right?”

(His father’s hand sends flames engulfing his face, and all he feels is pain, pain, pain-)

“Yeah.” Zuko takes a breath, looking at the flower again. It’s a limp, feeble thing – its petals droop towards to floor from which is has stubbornly taken root.  It is misplaced here, in the centre of the temple. Alone and strange, coming out of the earth to greet a world of stone, so unlike where it thought it would be.

“But that’s exactly _why_ you have to learn to bend it. You can’t stop being a firebender – it’s just as much a part of you as air or water or earth. The only way to protect yourself and others from your fire is to learn to use it. Then, you can learn to use it in ways that aren’t destructive.”  He sighs, running his hand down his face. His fingers stumble over the uneven scar tissue. “Being afraid of yourself isn’t going to help anyone.”

He looks up and sees Aang watching him intently. If he’s honest, he’s pretty sure everything he just said was bullshit, but it seems that his ramblings may have held some weight after all

(So he learnt something from his Uncle’s proverbs after all, he thinks, amused. Then regret swells, achingly familiar.)

“I want to learn to control it,” Aang says finally. “I want to learn to like it. My friend, Kuzon, he was a firebender.” A small smile creeps onto his face, bittersweet, like so much of Aang’s life.  “He always had tons of cool tricks to show me.” 

“Did he ever burn you?”

He shakes his head.  “No. Kuzon never hurt anyone.”

Zuko nods.

(He wants to leave it here. He wants to turn to Aang and say _then neither will you,_ wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to hurt people .

But Aang is the Avatar, and the threat of the Firelord hangs ever-present over him.

Aang will hurt people, or he will die.)

“There is more to fire than pain,” he says. “And even if you do get burnt -” he holds out his forearm, the skin pale and smooth, “- things heal.”

Aang looks as his arm, and then drifts up to study Zuko’s face. He winces, and looks away apologetically.

“Not always the same, though.”

“No,” Zuko agrees. “But sometimes, that’s…okay.”

(Zuko enters his father’s bunker fireless, and leaves with the remnants of lightning crackling though his veins. He is an outcast once more, a wanted criminal in his country, completely and utterly alone. And yet Zuko exits his father’s bunker with his head held high, and were there guards there to witness him, they would have sworn they saw him smile.)

“Sometimes, we need to hurt in order to grow stronger,” he says, and the words feel strange on his tongue. 

Aang is silent next to him, and after a while, Zuko genuinely thinks he’s gone to sleep.

“Hey Sifu,” he says finally, and Zuko turns to him, relieved he isn’t going to have to carry him back to his sleeping mat. “Because you woke me up tonight, will you let me skip morning meditation tomorrow?”

Zuko tries and fails to stifle back a laugh.

“I’ll see you at sunrise,” he responds, and Aang groans.

***

He is no longer afraid of fire.

Aang learn to accept the fire within him. He learns, and he accepts, and he _thrives._ He cycles through a set of moves they’ve been leaning with skill Zuko could only have dreamed of at his age. As he completes the final strike, he steps back, turns to Zuko, and grins whole heartedly.

Zuko watches the display, and smiles too. 

**Author's Note:**

> One day, I will write something with actual plot.
> 
> That day is not today.
> 
> I've been really wanting to write atla recently but I can't think of ANYTHING to write. So this is basically the same thing as my other atla fic - people milling around the Western Air Temple and thinking Deep Thoughts™. Not that happy with it, but eh.
> 
> If anyone has any good atla (or vld) prompts, feel free to shoot them my way! I'm so unproductive that the chances of them getting written are minimal, but you never know lol. Or if you just wanna talk about Zuko, that's cool too. My tumblr is http://emerynn.tumblr.com/
> 
> Comments are always appreciated!!


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